At least ten early christians basilicas are known existed on Nisyros, and certainly there must have been more that have until now escaped notice due to their ruinous or overgrown conditions. Most of these churches were of the tripartite ‘hellenistic’ basilical type with side aisles separated from the central have by colonnades, an apse on the eastern wall, clerestory windows, stone templon and timber roof(gabled over the have, lean-to over the aisles).
Walls were typically about 0.65 m., wide and plastered, and were often decorated with frescos. It was the habit of the first Christians, in Nisyros as elsewhere, make use of surviving pagan buildings, or at the very least to avail themselves of their ruinous foundations and building materials.
So it is common to find re-used marble fragments from classical times, especially round altars decorated with the ancient sacrificial emblems known as “bucrania”(bulls’ skulls) and garlands, which occasionally incorporate pagan inscriptions.
Many of these early christian churches, and presumably the few pagan buildings that survived until that period, were destroyed or rendered unusable by the early 7th century as results of earthquakes, fires, piratical incursions, etc. We know,for instance, that Nisyros and other nearby islands suffered serious earthquakes in 469 and 515 AD.
Modest single-nave vaulted chapels were built on the ruins, and Christians worship continued.
Of the 5th and 6th century basilicas there are numerous remains: in Mandraki, ruins of a large basilica are visible near the chapels of Agios Konstantinos and Taxiarchis Michail( Panormitis), included a stepped apsidal synthronon in the bema; remains of a similar building with mosaic floors are to be seen under the cemetery chapel of Agios Nikolaos and Agios Antonios overlooking the “Limnes” area; the small chapel of Agios Anargyroi, near the square of “Ilikiomeni”, is built into the bema of another large basilica; a basilica apparently dedicated to Agios Iohannis o Thelogos was excavated in 1979 near the municipal hotel; the remains of a basilica church with rich marble wall-facing at “Palaiokastro” likely occupy the site of an ancient temple.
To this list must be added an early christian basilica with apse at the place called Kardia, near the byzantine church of “Faneromeni”.
At Paloi there are basilica ruins at a place called “Limni” and at Agios Fokas to the east of the town. This late site is adjacent to a large, vaulted subterranean chamber probably a medieval cistern.
On the east coast of the island, near the beach of Lies, remains of a basilica are visible at the site called “Ton Latinon” or Latinos. Another basilica has been identified at the site of the monastery of Stavros near the district of Argos on the southern rim of the volcanic caldera.
There are therefore at least ten identified early christian basilica on Nisyros, an impressive number for such small island. With the exception of the ruins neasr the municipal hotel at the harbour of Mandraki, none of these buildings have yet been carefully investigated.
With the foundation of Constantinople in 330 AD, Nisyros became an integral part of the emerging Eastern Roman Empire, which came later to be known as the Byzantine Empire. During the 4th and 5th centuries, Nisyros was administrated as part of this empire through Rhodes. During the reign of the Emperor Justinian(527-565AD), however, this administration was centralized under a “Quaestor of the Army”, who also governed the region known in roman times as the “Province of the islands”, of which Nisyros and tho other islands of the Dodecanese were a part.
By this time the old roman empire was no longer divided into two distinct political halves; Rome itself had fallen to the Ostrogotis at the end of the 5th century AD, and the former Western Roman Empire was now called “Kingdom of Italy”. The emperors in Constantinople ruled over a largely greek and greek-speaking christian population inhabiting an area comprised most of the eastern Mediterranean.
After the 7th century, the Byzantine empire was divided for strategic reasons into new administrative regions known as “themata”, or themes. Nisyros belonged to the theme of Samos together with Cos, Tilos, Calymnos and Patmos, and was administrated, like all the other themes, by a single military officer.
The period between the late 7th and 11th centuries, when the byzantine emperor Niceforos Phocas expelled the Saracens from Crete, was one of almost continuous turmoil in the eastern Aegean, which suffered numerous piratical raids, mostly from Arabs and Saracens. We know, for instance, that in 653 AD, the governor of Syria Muawiya, acting on behalf of Caliph Ottaman, captured and pillaged Nisyros, briefly occupying Rhodes and the other larger islands.
After Muawiya’s defeat by emperor Constantine IV in 679, he made a peace treaty which required an annual tribute and the evacuation of the Aegean islands by the Arabs. This, however, did not deter piratical activity. By the beginning of the 13th century the Seljuk Turks, a nomadic Asian people that had been displaced by events in western China and adopted Islam as their religion, controlled most of the coast of Asia minor, right up to and including the “Triopion peninsula”(Datcha) opposite Nisyros. The Seljuks had left their first mark on the area in the year 1089, when they attacked Rhodes and its surrounding islands, including Nisyros.
Because of the continuous threat of piratical attack during these centuries, many of the smaller, more exposed Aegean islands began to lose their inhabitants, who fled to the larger byzantine cities. In order to entice the natives to remain on their land, the byzantine governors bestowed significant privileges on the the islanders, including exemption from taxation and self-rule. Suggestions that Nisyros was depopulated in this period are contradicted by local traditions that recall the foundation of monastic communities on the island during the “iconoclastic controversy”(726-843 AD) and later.
After 1082, the Venetians began to exert a significant influence in the area, when emperor Alexios Comnenos offered them important privileges in Rhodes, Cos, and the other islands of the eastern Aegean. In the year 1099, a venetian fleet on its way to Palestine to join the armies of the “First Crusade” occupied Rhodes and the adjacent islands until emperor John Comnenos was forced in 1125 to restore Venice’s commercial privileges, which had in the meanwhile been revoked.
During the “Fourth Crusade”, which ended with the “sack of Constantinople” in 1204 by western forces and the brief establishment there of a Latin empire, the byzantine governor of Rhodes and the adjacent islands, Leon Gavalas, declared independence and its known to have fortified Nisyros. Despite the attempt, in 1224, by the exiled byzantine emperor of Nicaea, Iohannis III Doukas Vatatzis, to pull Gavalas under his authority, the rhodian governor refused, choosing instead to pay a yearly tribute to Venice, which offered to protect Rhodes and the islands in exchange for further privileges. It way only in 1246 that the islands were reincorporated into byzantine empire, after Leon Gavalas had been succeeded by his brother Iohannis.
in the first halh of the 13th century, the eastern Aegean islands were continuously contested by the Venetians, Pisans, and Genoeses. In the 1248, soon after the restoration of the island to Byzantium, the Genoeses captured Rhodes temporarily. In 1261, following a determined campaign by the byzantine emperor Michael Palaiologos, Nisyros and the other islands of the Dodecanese were once again safely under the flag of Byzantium. Just before 1306, the venetian nobleman Jacopo Barozzi tried unsuccessfully to capture Nisyros with four ships. The greek inhabitants successfully repelled him.
The regional struggle between Venice and Genoa continued, however, and toward to the end of the century Genoa allied itself, for political reasons, to the Byzantines. Genoese influence during this period is attested by the political maneuverings of the Knight Vignolo de Vignoli, a Genoese vassal, who ‘invited’ the Knights of St. John on the 27th of May 1306 to occupy Rhodes, with the Pope’s blessing.
Because of the incresead political and social turmoil after the 7th century, ambitious church buildings projects were no longer undertaken on Nisyros and most other Aegean islands. Natives had to be content with smaller, single-nave, typically barrel-vaulted churches. These were roofed either with tiles or a thick plaster(idrauliko koniama) still used locally, and known on Nisyros as “Kourasani”. Some chapels, like Agios Mamas at the place called the “Mesochori you Sakellari” near Mandraki, which probably dates from the 13th century and is therefore one of the oldest surviving chapels in Nisyros, were frescoed, but it is likely that many icons and frescoes were removed or plastered-over during the first phase of then “iconoclastic controversy”.
The same,simple barrel-vaulted church type continued to be used through the period of ottoman occupation. The one exception on
on Nisyros is the ruinous church of Panagia Faneromeni, which is a centralized domed building preserving frescos that da the very likely to the 11th century. Other byzantine structures that are known to exist on Nisyros are the chapel of Agia Triads at Nikia, which has frescoes dated to around the 15th century, and the church of Taxiarchis at Emporios, which has frescoes dating perhaps to the 13th century, possibly 16th
